


It Was Too Cold Always

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:11:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1489534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Love can’t save you. It’s a stupid notion, thought up by teenagers who desperately want to be saved. He used to be one of them, back when he and Enjolras first met. He managed to keep the pretence, up until a few months ago, when it all came crashing down around him.</i>
</p>
<p>Grantaire and his final moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Was Too Cold Always

**Author's Note:**

> My [Pyla](http://pyladeswild.tumblr.com/) betaed this because they are perfect and wonderful and venerable.

Grantaire lifts his hand in an aborted attempt to brush his hair back. There isn’t much point in the gesture anyway. He makes his way to the bathroom cabinet with limbs full of languor and doesn’t feel much of anything. Everything seems to be the same, then, and maybe he’s getting sick of it. Maybe the worn-out tapestry threads of his life are getting too loose, and knotting together in places. He stopped drinking, which should be a start, and he has Enjolras now. He has Enjolras to hold him in strong arms and hold him close and reassure him that  _you’re alive, you’re alive, you are so so very alive and it is beautiful, Grantaire, don’t you see how beautiful it is?_ and Grantaire always has to say  _no, Enjolras, I don’t see much of anything when it comes to me_  but he doesn’t really say that, not anymore, not after the first time when Enjolras looked at him with those big blue, sad eyes. They were sad, and Grantaire never wanted Enjolras to be sad. He doesn’t want that, still. Enjolras is perfect and he is a worn-out husk of a body that won’t hit thirty.

He has Enjolras. He thought that would be enough.

Love can’t save you. It’s a stupid notion, thought up by teenagers who desperately want to be saved. He used to be one of them, back when he and Enjolras first met. He managed to keep the pretence, up until a few months ago, when it all came crashing down around him.

It didn’t seem like an especially important moment to anyone except Grantaire. All it took was Enjolras to not complain about Grantaire’s alcohol intake once, and that was it. Grantaire knew that he couldn’t be saved. He was stuck on a raft out at sea and everyone made halfhearted attempts at pulling him onto their ships but nobody did. Nobody ever did. Nobody will. He-

Fuck.

He holds the razor blade in his left hand, the magnitude of its purpose beginning to dawn on him.

He was going to die.

That realisation would shake him to the core if he had any fear about it anymore. As it is, Grantaire just smiles and runs the blade down his vein. Blood begins to trickle down his arm, but it isn’t enough. He makes another cut - deeper this time - and switches the blade to his right hand to run it down his left arm. He is shakier now, and not just because he is using his non-dominant hand.

As he lies on the floor, staring at the ceiling, Grantaire’s mind begins to settle into its new state of permanent blankness. Blood pools around him and he feels at peace. At least, he thinks he does. There’s still an aching need in him that isn’t drowned out by the alcohol and isn’t dried up by his blood loss.

It’s for Enjolras, he thinks. Not just Enjolras. Bahorel and Bossuet and Joly and Musichetta and Éponine and Cosette and Courfeyrac and Combeferre and Feuilly and  _fuck, what if they really cared for him_? He couldn’t move and couldn’t apologise and the only thing left behind was a scrap of paper with a few words in his near-illegible scrawl.

-

_too much i’m sorry_

-

And he thinks of more he wanted to say; individual apologies and where he hid the most precious things to him - not booze but the mementos of his happiest days spent in sun and rain and snow with people who really love him and he loves them back and he needs them to know, needs them to see, needs to tell th-

And he is dead.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith, who may or may not be my favourite poet.
> 
> Feedback makes me happy.


End file.
